PreK: Color Blending

Last week, the PreK art class explored a variety of ways to blend colors together. We started by drawing with markers on paper towels. Next, we added water and watched the colors spread out. The more water we added, the more they mixed! At the end of class, everyone got up and walked around the room to look at each other’s creations.

The paper towel activity was followed by a dripping experiment with coffee filters. The first part of the activity was done with bottles of colored water. By adding little drops, we got to watch the colors spread out and blend with each added drop. We also learned that too much will make one color take over the others. The second part of coffee filter day was done with watercolor paints. It was a much more controlled project, so students got to use a wider variety of colors. The second batch of filters came out much more vibrant than the first.

The final activity was making marbled milk paper. Everyone got a bowl of milk dotted with food coloring, a bowl of dish soap, and a Q-tip. By adding soap to the Q-tip and then sticking it into the colored milk, we got to watch the colors ‘run’ away from the Q-tip. By poking and stirring, we made a collection of swirling designs.Our bowls got very green thanks to an endless enthusiasm for mixing, but that’s alright. I think green is a lovely color! We used coffee filters to capture our blends by laying them on top of the milk and tapping lightly.

That activity is hard to imagine if you’ve never done it, but here’s a link to a tutorial on it, if anyone wants to try at home: http://babbledabbledo.com/science-art-for-kids-marbled-milk-paper/

This week, we started looking at a new artist: Andy Warhol. We studied his pop art phase, focusing on his Marilyn Monroe and Soup Can paintings. Then we started a class project of our own. Each student traced two handprints onto their paper, and then painted the hands and backgrounds of each half in different colors. The next day, we added black handprints on top. Once they had dried a bit, we took them to the floor to do an arranging game! Everyone got a chance to help make an arrangement of the paintings as a set. They aren’t all done yet, but they still made a stunning display. PreK was so interested in Andy Warhol that at the end of class, they even asked for more information about him, and even a short movie if I had it. So we watched a quick little video on his Pop Art phase and had a discussion about how different popular items could become Pop Art.